Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Comcast Leave Britney Alone!

1. Because the topic of cable companies with no competition came up in today's class, here's some ranting against the cable company Comcast by a critic for Advertising Age, Bob Garfield. Maybe you have experienced similar exasperation because of Time Warner. I read about this at the blog BuzzMachine, where the author, Jeff Jarvis, describes the negative consequences of monopolies and duopolies, i.e., companies that have no competition. He has some intriguing suggestions about what can be done about this, including the idea of groups of ordinary customers creating their own advertising campaigns against companies that screw them over to take back some power and publicize the practices that they dislike. I'll leave it at that and you can click over if you're interested.

2. Anyone have any thoughts about this video, which is nearing a million views on YouTube after only a single day? I'll tell you what I think: this guy seems sincere and I admire his courage to share his feelings with the whole world. A lot of the comments at YouTube are really nasty and abusive, which is typical. Perhaps we'll return to this example in a few weeks when we talk about media audiences and fandom.

1 comment:

TASK MASTER said...

WOW. Is this really a guy?

He seems very sincere.